Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream

I asked Saraswati for a dream last night, and got a weird, scrambled mess involving Japan and her incarnation as Benzaiten-sama. I was at Ueno again, and looking for another talisman, but I couldn’t get the attendants at her shrine to speak to me.

Then I woke up today and saw that it’s the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Nagasaki is on the 9th. I realized why Saraswati has been so quiet. WWII is a painful subject for her. In Kichijōji, beautiful Kichijōji, her shrine remained opened and unharmed throughout the war. Ueno was bombed flat, and her pond was drained and replaced with rice paddies. In Kichijōji, her presence was pure and unfiltered. In Ueno, she was much quieter.

What desperation brings a people to drain a little park pond for two acres of rice? Were those bombs really necessary? The allies pushed for an unconditional surrender; Japan feared the loss of the Imperial system, and held out until the bombs fell, all out of that fear. In the end, we got our unconditional surrender, but let them keep their Emperor.

Why bother? Why drop the bombs? Was it really a choice, as so often posited, between dropping the two atomic bombs or invading Japan? I actually doubt that. The privation within the country was growing. They drained My Lady’s pond for two acres of rice.